Ashton, Paul, Bartlett, A and Clemens, Justin (2006) Masters & Disciples: Institution, Philosophy, Praxis. Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 2 (1-2). pp. 1-8. ISSN 1832-9101

Abstract

Although it has taken nearly two decades for Being and Event to become available in English, there are already an enormous number of conferences, articles, translations, introductions and monographs dedicated to Badiou and his work (see the bibliography in this edition of Cosmos and History). We find works of Badiou translated directly from the French editions (Deleuze, Ethics, Saint Paul, Metapolitics, Handbook of Inaesthetics, Briefings on Existence, Manifesto for Philosophy, Being and Event); essays or extracts from existing publications, on a variety of matters (politics, art, etc.) and appearing in a range of journals (e.g., Diacritics, Art Forum, etc.); created or assembled works not appearing in such form (such as Infinite Thought, On Beckett or Theoretical Writings); new pieces written especially for translation (e.g., the many ‘Author’s prefaces’ now available). If one casts an eye over the existing commentries, they seem preponderantly to fall into a small number of significant categories. First, the introductions, ranging from the extended and well-informed monographs to shorter articles in specialist journals. Second, the critiques, which tend to focus either on Badiou’s general tendencies, or on particular claims that he makes (e.g., Think Again, most of the essays in Communication and Cognition Vols. 36 & 37, and in Polygraph 17, etc.). Third, the assimilation of Badiou’s terminology and themes into more general projects, as a kind of grab-bag of general concepts for use in varying situations. But what we were calling for was something a little different, a fourth way: a systematic deployment of Badiou’s categories. It’s not that this hasn’t been attempted. Oliver Feltham, the English translator of Being and Event, and a contributor to the current issue of Cosmos and History, has done so in regard to a local Australian political event in ‘Singularity Happening in Politics: The Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Canberra 1972’. But such an ‘application’ has been surprisingly rare, to the point where it seems people might appear chary of being mistaken for a merely uncritical disciple, dogmatist, or dinosaur. (It is noteworthy that such accusations have, in the Anglophone world at least, been flung at ‘Lacanians’, a state of affairs about which Slavoj Žižek has often fulminated). It has been, as we have said, much more the case that critics have wanted to pose different questions, or try to get different things out of Badiou’s corpus to date.

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